1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of multimedia presentation development tools and more particularly to slide show generators for multimedia presentations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multimedia presentations relate to the composition of different presentation elements of different media types within a single, cohesive document or set of documents. The different elements generally can include text, imagery, audio and video. The combination of these different elements has proven to be effective in delivering powerful presentations for conveying important facts and ideas which otherwise might be lost upon an audience where the presentation is limited only to dry text. Thus, at present the multimedia presentation has become the standard-bearer technology for presenters everywhere.
Presentation tools, though plentiful in number, have always performed several basic tasks. First, presentation tools permit the selection and placement of different media elements within a single presentation. Second, presentation tools permit the creation of simple media elements such as text and basic line art within a single presentation. Yet, modern presentation tools have grown from simple development environments to complex tools. In this regard, presentations have trended to the dynamic requiring newfound functionality for controlling animation and other dynamic tools for presentations. These resulting complex tools now require substantial expertise to master.
To compound matters, it can never be presumed that an audience for a multimedia presentation is sighted and not sensory impaired in some manner. Presently, several assistive technologies have been widely distributed, usually in concert with the distribution of an operating system, to provide one or more alternative user interface mechanisms for the purpose of enhanced accessibility. Examples of assistive technologies include an audio user interface such as a screen reader. Yet, conventional multimedia tools are not able to produce multimedia presentations which can easily integrate with assistive technologies associated with a presentation tool processing a multimedia presentation.